sure those at Mont Royal were not threatened by occupying troops or other dangers whose nature he couldn't guess. He would cover the distance to the plantation much faster than he had when riding north. Then, the moment he was finished at home — Virginia.
He lifted the rein, turned the mule's head and started him rapidly back the way they had come.
135
Under a brilliant full moon, Huntoon and Powell reached the edge of the gully. Huntoon was glad to stop. His feet hurt. Powell slipped his right hand in his coat pocket.
Huntoon took off his spectacles, pinched up a bit of shirt bosom and polished one lens, then the other, saying finally, 'What is it you want to discuss?'
With a cryptic, 'Look down there,' Powell bobbed his head toward the gully bottom. Huntoon leaned forward, peered down. Powell pulled out the four-barrel Sharps and shot him in the back.
The lawyer uttered a short, gasping cry. He spun and reached for Powell's lapel. Powell smacked him with his free hand. Huntoon's spectacles flew off and sailed into the dark below.
Blinking like a newborn animal, Huntoon tried to focus his eyes on the man who had shot him. Pain blazing through his body, he understood the betrayal. It had been meant to happen on this journey. Planned from the start.
How stupidly naive he had been. Of course he had suspected Ashton and Powell were lovers. For that reason he had mailed the letter to his Charleston law partner. But later, filled with renewed hope of regaining Ashton's affection through a display of courage, he had regretted the instructions in the letter. But he had done nothing to countermand them, always assuming there would be ample time later. And what he'd seen in St. Louis had prompted the second letter; the one he'd given her —
Now, as if he could somehow cancel both past and present pain by will and action, he seized Powell's sleeve. Formed in his throat a plea for mercy and help. But the fiery wound and saliva rendered the words gibberish.
'Let go of me,' Powell said with disgust, and shot him a second time.
The ball went straight into Huntoon's stomach, forcing him to step back. He stepped into space. Powell had a last brief vision of the poor fool's wet eyes and mewling mouth. Then Huntoon dropped.
Powell blew into the barrels of his pistol and put it away. Over the strident barking of coyotes across the gully, he heard the clump and thump of Huntoon's body striking, rebounding into space, falling and rebounding again.
Then it grew quiet. He could hear Collins and the others shouting to him. Was he all right?
With a smile, he stood regarding the high-riding moon. Despite the alarms from the campfire, he lingered a moment, studying the sky above the wind-scoured land and congratulating himself. He imagined Ashton's dark- tipped breasts, his alone now, together with the wild thatch below. He felt youthful. Content. Refreshed.
Over a hump of rock behind him, a small, skinny man with stringy hair and a waist clout appeared, bathed in brilliant moonlight for a moment. In his right hand he held a buckskin-covered war club consisting of a wood handle connected by sinew to a round stone head. Powell didn't see the man, or the second one, who rose into sight as the first man jumped.
He heard the man land and turned, terror clogging his throat. He clawed for the Sharps, but it caught in his pocket lining. The stone struck his head, one powerful and correctly aimed blow that broke open his left temple and killed him by the time he dropped to his knees, open-mouthed. Blood rushed down the left side of his face as he toppled forward.
The little Apache grinned and thrust the dripping club over his head, triumphant. His companion leaned down and landed beside him. Half a dozen others glided from behind other rocks, barefoot and light as dancers. All of them stole toward the voices and the fire glow.
The moment Banquo Collins heard the two shots and the teamsters started hollering, he quietly but quickly looked to his own gear. One of the teamsters said, 'Who fired? 'Paches?'
'I doubt it. Sometimes they carry stolen pieces, but customarily it's a club — or a wee knife to slit your throat. Also, they'll not risk a fight and possible death at night. They believe conditions existing when they die follow them to the spirit world, and they want to rest forever in pleasant sunshine. Nothing to fear, see?'
Throughout the speech, Collins had finished gathering his gear. He tugged his hat over his eyes, turned and started away from the fire at a brisk walk. The teamster was too tense and stupid to compare the guide's statements with reality: the full moon lent the landscape a clarity and whiteness almost like that of a wintry noonday.
But Collins's rapid stride woke up the teamster. 'Where the hell you goin'?' he yelled.
Head down, the guide kept moving. A few more steps, and he would have cover among the big —
'Collins, you yella dog, you come back here!'
Not a dog, a glass snake, he thought, recognizing hysteria in the voice and flinging himself sideways while reaching for his revolver. The wild shot fired by the teamster missed by two yards, pinging off rock. He didn't waste a bullet of his own — he might need every one — but his leap threw him against a boulder, bruising his shoulder. Recovering, he lunged on.
After a few steps he turned again, glimpsed part of the clearing between tall stones. He saw the Jicarillas swarm out of the dark beyond the fire and surround the three hired men. Genuinely frightened, Collins fled, leaving behind the capering Apaches and the wild, sharp barks with which they imitated a coyote. The barks were not quite loud enough to drown out the screams.
Running, stumbling often, Collins drove himself until pain and shortness of breath forced him to slow down. His chest felt close to bursting. After a brief rest he pushed on until he found a place where he thought he could descend. Hand over bloodied hand, he went down the rock wall. He misjudged one hold and fell the last twenty feet, knocked nearly unconscious.
Dust-covered, his hands and face red from cuts and scrapes, he rested again, then lurched to the edge of the stream, which he crossed with a minimum of noise. Not that the Apaches would hear the splashes. They were whooping and yelling to celebrate.
Collins knew they would take the horses to ride awhile, then butcher. They would also break open the gun crates and take the Spencers. He wanted to learn the fate of the two heavy wagons, the object of the late Mr. Powell's attention. The moment Collins saw the Apaches at the fire he knew they had disposed of his half-crazy employer and that worm of a lawyer. Neither man mattered to him, nor any of the teamsters. The teamsters were the tail of the glass snake.
What mattered was his own skin and, secondarily, the wagons. When he reached the shallows on the other side, he headed upstream until he located a good observation point in some twisted junipers. He was almost directly opposite the mouth of the deep gully near the campsite. The Apaches had added fresh wood to the fire. He saw flames leap above the tall rocks occasionally.
He was wrong about the source of the fire, he quickly discovered. It came from one of the wagons, which appeared between the rocks, pushed by fifteen or twenty angry Indians. The whole forward third of the wagon was burning. The front wheels blazed brightly.
The Apaches pushed it to the gully rim and with grunts and exclamations tipped it over. The emptied wagon — if indeed it was completely empty, which Collins doubted — stood perpendicular a moment, tailgate toward the moon. Then it dropped, the front end decorated with two swiftly spinning disks of fire, like the Catherine wheels he remembered dimly from a childhood visit to his pa's home city of Glasgow.
Wood splintered. The fire separated into several gaudy sections, each of which hit a different place on the bottom. The Apaches disappeared, returning soon with the second burning wagon, which they also sent into the gully. Then they howled and shook their clubs and lances.
To Collins they sounded angry. Maybe they had expected some greater prize from the wagons than rifles and provisions. Maybe, he speculated, fingering an oozing gash in his left cheek, they didn't know where to look. The
